In a few minutes they found themselves standing across from the oversize door that sealed the refrigerated storage room where their Tran compatriots were being held. Williams had to admit that he’d been wrong. September accepted the apology as his due.
This would be the trickiest part of their escape attempt, for naturally there was no thought of trying to flee without freeing Hunnar, Elfa, and the rest of their Tran friends.
“Can you see anything?” Ethan and the others looked on anxiously as Blanchard put his face to the window in the door and stared into the room beyond.
“Two dimples in the ceiling. They might be spy eyes, or they might be something else. Can’t make out details.”
“Sprinkler heads,” Semkin suggested hopefully. “Why would anyone put spy-eye cameras in a freezer?”
“I don’t know.” Blanchard stepped back, rubbed at his eyes. “We’ll just have to slip inside and hope that if they are cameras I’ll have a chance to jam them before anyone wakes up.” The abrupt stirring of the fifty or so Tran in the room would be bound to draw the immediate attention of even the sleepiest of security personnel watching the monitors.
They waited while the geophysicist used his homemade device to interrupt the magnetic flow which kept the door sealed. In the darkness the faint clicks sounded preternaturally loud. September wrapped one huge fist around the oversize handle, nodded at Blanchard, then slowly eased the door aside.
Several Tran stirred. One sat up and stared in the darkness but said nothing. Blanchard hurriedly moved to aim the jamming unit at one of the dark spots in the ceiling, relaxed with a sigh. Sprinkler heads. No reason, just as Semkin had said, to put security cameras in what was essentially an enlarged refrigerator. Ethan didn’t doubt such devices would eventually be installed to keep an eye on the Tran as well as the humans. For now it wasn’t an immediate concern of Bamaputra’s or Antal’s. Besides, a primitive native couldn’t defeat a magnetic lock. The cold room was perfectly secure.
As secure as the dormitory.
They spread out and began waking the Tran, admonishing them to silence. Dark furry shapes began to rise and gather. Faint light shone eerily through raised dan, giving their native companions the appearance of enormous bats. Within minutes the entire group had been awakened. Hugs and greetings were postponed until they could be exchanged under more amenable circumstances. They still had to get out of the installation.
The corridor was empty as a newly dug grave and they began filing out of the room. The mere movement of so many bodies produced a certain amount of sound, enough to rise above the soft muttering of machinery. Still, by itself the noise wouldn’t be enough to raise an alarm. Someone had to hear it first. Blanchard reseated the chamber door while Ethan and the others discussed their plans with the newly liberated Tran.
“We’ve got to try and retake the ship.”
Hunnar nodded, that odd little down and sideways movement of the head that Ethan knew as well as any human gesture. “It will be good to fight.”
“Even if we should fail,” whispered Monslawic, Ta-hoding’s first mate, “better to die fighting than rotting away in a cage.”
September clapped the Tran on a furry shoulder. “We ain’t going to fail. Not after having made it this far.”
They followed the giant as he struggled to retrace the path they’d taken when they’d been marched inside the installation. There was no way to muffle the clatter of clawlike chiv on metal, which sounded like an army of dog-sized insects. A single night tech left his dials and gauges to find out what was making the strange noise. He found out. His eyes widened as half a dozen of the Slanderscree’s sailors jumped him. They would have cut his throat save for the intervention of the humans. Ethan pointed out that the unlucky man wasn’t responsible for the installation or its raison d’être. It required all their powers of persuasion to dissuade the Tran, who were eager and anxious for someone to kill. In the end they settled for gifting the technician with a mild concussion.
Cheela Hwang and her companions descended on the man’s equipment belt and pockets like so many scientific scavengers, appropriating everything that might prove useful later.
No one guarded the entrance to the installation. It would have been a waste of manpower. The human inhabitants rarely went outside and unauthorized Tran were never admitted. Nevertheless, Blanchard and Moware wasted what Ethan and September thought were precious minutes double-checking possible alarm relays. The Tran milled aimlessly behind the humans, fancying they could already smell the frigid freedom that lay on the other side of the heavy barrier.
The geophysicist, Hwang, and Semkin worked with the door mechanism for several minutes. Then they all stepped back. Blanchard made a connection, a motor sprang to life, and the door swung up and back quietly. Everyone held their breath, but no sirens screamed behind them, no horns shattered the night silence. On the barren slope outside the ceaseless wind moaned invitingly.
There was no holding back the Tran. Sailors and soldiers poured through the opening and gathered on the cleared, flat area that had been sliced from the granite. They sucked in the fresh cold air, spread their dan, and danced pirouettes on the frozen places out of sheer exhilaration.
Off to their left lay the path that led down toward sleeping Yingyapin. Tran-ky-ky’s multiple moons illuminated the switchbacks, a dark ribbon drizzled among lighter rock. A few lights burned late in the would-be capital of all Tran-ky-ky.
Ethan started down as Blanchard closed the door behind them. A clawed hand held him back and he turned to see Hunnar Redbeard’s cat’s eyes glowing down at him. The knight smiled with satisfaction.
“There is a quicker way, my friend.” He turned, exposing his broad back. “Climb on. Put your legs around my waist, just below where the dan is attached.”
“I don’t…”
“Do not argue. In that place we rely on your wisdom. Out in the real world you must listen to us. See.” He pointed and Ethan could see Hwang and the other scientists crawling onto the backs of strong sailors.
As the door closed, Blanchard came rolling out beneath it, just clearing the descending lip of the barrier. He rose panting, the visor of his suit temporarily fogged. His tone was exultant.
“I haven’t done anything like this since I was at university. Rather like a complex game.” He turned to face the doorway, a part of the hillside once more. “The thirty-second repeat is still fooling them.”
“Let’s hope it continues doing so.” Ethan climbed onto Hunnar’s back and wrapped his fingers around the straps that held the two pieces of the hessavar-hide vest together. He locked his legs around the knight’s waist. “What now?”
“This now.”
Hunnar trudged to the edge of what to Ethan looked like a sheer drop. Closer inspection revealed that the slope wasn’t quite vertical. He’d never been very fond of heights. Water had been dumped here to create a smooth ribbon of ice down the embankment. In the moonlight it gleamed like a frozen waterfall.
He started to say, “You can’t…!” as Hunnar pushed off into emptiness.
They were falling. Wind roared around his visor. The knight spread his powerful arms, opening his membranous dan to their maximum extent—not to catch the wind this time but to brake their descent. To Ethan it didn’t feel like they were slowing down at all. His fingers dug into the hessavar straps while his heart commenced a rapid migration up into the vicinity of his throat.